Welcome to my commonplace blog

The goal of this blog is to preserve a few ideas and quotes from books I read. In the old days when books were not so readily available, people kept "commonplace books" where they copied choice passages they wanted to be able to remember and perhaps reuse. The idea got picked up by V.F.D. and it's common knowledge that most of that organization's volunteers have kept commonplace books, and so have Laura and I.

I'm sure there are many other Internet sites and blogs dedicated to the same idea. But this one is mine. Feel free to look around and leave comments, but not spam.

30 July 2010

Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)

Cool book, typical of what I expect of one of Neil Gaiman's: a parallel world (here a subterranean London based in part on ancient underground train stations and playing with the heraldic nature of the names of many London's places), where moral decisions direct the character's journey. A meditation on choices and their consequences.


Quotes:

"You've a good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, i'ts not."

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do. (Richard)

"I couldn't just have left you there." "You could have," she said. "You didn't."

"The first part of the Ordeal of the Key," he said, "is the nice cup of tea."

The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far.

When angels go bad, Richard, they go worse than anyone. (Marquis of Carabas)

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

"I already killed you once today," it was saying. "What does it take to teach some people?"

The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them, graciously, “and you do not know anything at all."

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